I was reading the New York Times at the Safari Pub last night, and on the front page was a feature on Emory University's new online roomate-matching service, which allows incoming freshmen to pick a compatable roommate using a profile-matching system similar to online dating. The article went on to explain that colleges across the country are putting increased effort into ensuring that new roommates will have similar lifestyles, expectations, and interests. Davidson University even has its new students take a Myers-Briggs personality test.
My initial reaction to all this effort is skepticism. For one thing, matching roomates for their homogeny seems to defeat the point of going away to college: to expand your horizons, to meet people unlike yourself. If a school puts so much time into pairing roommates who will bond well, there's a danger that they'll eliminate the possibility of a wider, more diverse social setting. Why branch out when your roommate is your soulmate? And the whole system becomes rather absurd when you consider that public university officials aren't allowed to use religion as a factor in making housing decisions. So students can be paired together because they both like washing the dishes immediately after meals, but no one can request to live with another Catholic, or another Orthodox Jew.
Personally, I've always appreciated how Covenant College handled rooming assignments, matching personalities with a lot of prayer. In four years at Covenant, I never once roomed with anyone remotely like me. Instead, I bunked with a Scotch Canadian who liked to collect mushrooms, a hippy folksinger who slept in a cardboard box, the world's nicest soccer player (who spent his nights outside the room on the phone with his long-distance sweetheart), a somewhat irritable Pink Floyd buff, the campus' holiest man, a cheery video game addict, a guy who built his own computer and liked to hear it hum at night, a dangerously skinny freshman, and Julian the Cynic, who was also Canadian but less happy about it. And almost all of those situations were perfect for me: I learned more about myself and how to relate to those unlike me. And I had a great time.
Oddly, I never roomed with Josiah. Perhaps this is why we're such good friends.
Posted by mesh at August 8, 2003 02:41 PM | TrackBackI've found that the roommates that I've gotten "by chance" have been at least as good and in most cases better than the ones I've selected for myself.
Posted by: Christin at August 8, 2003 03:04 PMI would say that you don't have to live with someone drastically different from yourself in order to broaden your horizons. There are still plenty of opportunites to meet new and different people including the obvious -- neighbors within your dorm and classmates.
Part of me wishes we'd had a system like this when I was at ASMS (boarding high school) because my arbitrarily assigned roommate and I didn't exactly fit. Of course, my favorite roommate there probably wouldn't have been picked for me by a computer system, and he's the only classmate I still talk to on a regular basis.
As good as their system sounds otherwise, it's ridiculous that Emory won't let you specify a religious preference for your roommate.
Posted by: John at August 8, 2003 04:00 PMHoly Moly- you've had a lot of room-mates! I got married after the first 2 years of college though, so I kinda got stuck with the last one... forever. Ha!
Posted by: Shannon at August 8, 2003 04:09 PMWell, I had a lot of roommate turnover. :) Actually, I lived in a lot of three-man rooms.
I'm starting to think about getting a one-man apartment for the fall. It's kind of a nice thought.
Posted by: mesh at August 8, 2003 04:14 PMMesh, I wholeheartedly agree with you, and I appreciate the trip down memory lane, that is, me remembring all those great folks you roomed with, and how hilarious all the many many different combinations of room-mates we saw on Catacombs. It was almost like an implicit rule down there: mix it up.
But hey, you were like the unofficial house-mate last year. You musta spent the night down at my place 2 or 3 times a week!
Posted by: JosiahQ at August 8, 2003 05:22 PMseeing the title for this post, i thought it was gonna be about me. because rooming with me is, with one exception, your ticket out of covenant college. it truly is roommate roulette. ive roomed with 7 people, and all of them save one have gotten kicked out or dropped out before the end of the semester after i lived with them if not during that very semester. ive had two "future" roommates get ousted after we'd made plans. the weird thing is that its never had anything to do with me. the only roommate that is still there is the one i had the most problems with, but even we got along really well and still do. i guess its a product of being friends with people who werent good fits with covenant. or it could be that ive lived on the two wildest halls on campus. or both.
Posted by: dp at August 8, 2003 06:26 PMi room with vincent
Posted by: Lowen "Lionheart" Howard at August 9, 2003 12:39 AMMesh i Hear you... well i didn't read the post very thoroughly but thats irrelavent. I too have had a lot of roommates. A guy who wore orange cammo in public; a guy who all he did was sleep, check his juno email, and dream about a girl who went to another school; then there was the tall texan who used to eat pistachios with me and let me have the bottom bunk; the Scottish piper that gave me an inferiority complex; a mathamatician with his head in the books; a Lud Butz who reminded me of a young Dr. Raphael/Dr. Dodson; a Video game adict that tied up the phone line 24 hours a day playing online games, and a californian surfer who i'm not sure ever surfed. Roommates are a lot like underwear every once and a while you need a change but you can always go back to them after a good cleaning.
Posted by: Holtonian at August 9, 2003 04:46 PMHOLTON! what about me? I can't believe you listed Josh Hayes and not me...
Posted by: JosiahQ at August 11, 2003 11:18 AMI knew i had forgotten someone when i posted that and as soon as i had clicked the post button it dawned on me. I also roomed with a guy who would eat an entire box of fudge pops and stick all the wrappers and popsicle sticks under my bed, stuck women's panties under my pillow, and made odd noises mostly gutteral from his room late at night.
Posted by: Chris holton at August 11, 2003 05:24 PMTotally unrelated, but I'm addicted to personality tests. I feel like, there's always room to incorporate a Meyers-Briggs personality test into any decision one needs to make. Heck, I don't even need a reason. I love those things.
Posted by: scott cunningham at August 12, 2003 10:43 AM